Recent progress of green sorbents-based technologies for low concentration CO2 capture

The increased concentration of CO2 due to continuous breathing and no discharge of human beings in the manned closed space, like spacecraft and submarines, can be a threat to health and safety. Effective removal of low concentration CO2 from the manned closed space is essential to meet the requirements of long-term space or deep-sea exploration, which is an international frontier and trend. Ionic liquids (ILs), as a widespread and green solvent, already showed its excellent performance on CO2 capture and absorption, indicating its potential application in low concentration CO2 capture. In this review, we first summarized the current methods and strategies for direct capture from low concentration CO2 in both the atmosphere and manned closed spaces. Then, the multi-scale simulation methods of CO2 capture by ionic liquids are described in detail, including screening ionic liquids by COSMO-RS methods, capture mechanism by density functional theory and molecular dynamics simulation, and absorption process by computational fluid dynamics simulation. Lastly, some typical IL-based green technologies for low concentration CO2 capture, such as functionalized ILs, co-solvent systems with ILs, and supported materials based on ILs, are introduced, and analyzed the subtle possibility in manned closed spaces. Finally, we look forward to the technology and development of low concentration CO2 capture, which can meet the needs of human survival in closed space and proposed that supported materials with ionic liquids have great advantages and infinite possibilities in the vital area.